Growing up as I did in the northeast, I always assumed that the really weird life forms lived somewhere else--the Amazonian rain forest, maybe, or the deep sea. But we've got at least one truly bizarre creature we can boast about: the star-nosed mole. Its star is actually 22 fleshy tendrils that extend from its snout. For a long time, it wasn't entirely clear what the moles used the star for. The moles were so quick at finding food--larvae, worms, and other creatures that turn up in their tunnels--that some scientists suggested that the star could detect the electric fields of animals.
That idea hasn't panned out, but the truth has turned out to be just as exotic. As I write in tomorrow's issue of the New York Times, the star is the most sensitive touch organ known to science. It is studded with 25,000 touch-sensitive nerve organs, which channel ...
